REPORT OF THE WORKING GROUP ON FISH ECOLOGY (WGFE)

Report Highlights• An analysis of species distributional responses to environmental variables as requested byOSPAR (Section 2) showed species-specific response that could not be solely attributedto any one environmental variable. Mechanisms for responses likely differ betweenspecies and fishing effects on abundance within distributions cannot be discounted asimportant factors.• A spawner biomass versus fishing mortality plot, common in a single speciesprecautionary approach framework, was constructed using output from MSVPA for theNorth Sea. Though there are some major assumptions required to construct this sort ofplot for a community, it can help identify targets and potentially reference points forcommunity indicators. This framework was developed and interpretation of theproportion of large fish indicators and mean fish weight indicator were explored with thisindicator in Section 6.